London -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Summer may be drawing to a close but for the eurozone 's economy , spring has only just begun .

After 18 months in recession , the single currency bloc finally posted some much needed growth in the form of a 0.3 % expansion of gross domestic product for the second quarter .

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Brussels was quick to take the credit , claiming its policies of structural reforms had finally started to take hold , whilst the investor community cautioned more work would be needed to ensure the nascent recovery could be sustained .

The truth is that yes , things are looking up but it depends where you are in Europe and there 's certainly little room for complacency .

Predictably , growth in the eurozone 's two biggest economies , Germany and France , underpinned the region 's revival .

But a closer look at individual countries further down the pecking order throws up some unexpected surprises , which I 've outlined below .

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Portugal , a nation whose profligacy and lack of competitiveness led to it being bailed out , grew 1.1 % while the Netherlands , famous for its fiscal prudence , shrank 0.2 % -- its fourth straight quarter of contraction .

The economies of Italy and Spain remained stuck in reverse gear as well .

So much for the stereotypes and the hard and fast crisis response rules which have taken endless European Union summits to draft .

Reading the data one would be forgiven for thinking three years of austerity never happened . In fact it was n't even mentioned once in Olli Rehn 's own communique .

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And yet the challenge for Europe 's leaders at a time when some of them are coming up for re-election will be to seize upon the green shoots without dropping the ball on spending cuts .

In Germany , which will face a general election next month , business groups are already lobbying any incoming government to boost investment spending .

And in France , large firms are still loath to hire due to the government 's lack of fiscal clarity and President Hollande 's new punitive tax regime .

A CEO of one FTSE 100 business with over 60,000 staff across the EU told me Europe was in recovery , and that presented opportunities -- but confidence was needed to ensure the upswing really took hold .

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However , as any business leader will also tell you , confidence is an intangible currency . Indeed , the next challenge for Europe 's top brass will be to convince companies the future is bright enough to start hiring again .

Across the eurozone and the broader EU as a whole , firms have been amassing huge cash reserves which , in the face of uncertainty , have been neither spent on new machinery nor on the hiring of new staff .

Such businesses will need more evidence of a true lift than a mere quarter of expansion before they are to undertake any hefty capital expenditure .

The eurozone crisis has dominated the political and economic sphere for more than three years . During that time millions have lost their jobs creating a legacy of high unemployment and long-term underemployment which will take years to tackle .

With more than a quarter of their populations out of work today , countries like Spain and Greece will probably still finding solutions to their jobs crisis by the time the next recession rolls around .

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That 's not counting a whole generation who missed its first step on the job ladder .

If Europe really has learned its lesson , business and government should start setting the wheels in motion now to work together and retrain staff for the jobs available today and tomorrow .

More jobs would boost domestic consumption and help provide a counterweight to export-dependency of the growth generators like Germany .

But to hire , businesses need to be offered incentives .

One incentive is a stable , more robust economy . Another is a benign interest rate environment , which is why what would really give this recovery legs is a rate cut by the end of this year . Mario Draghi , take note .

Read more : Central bankers and the games of wordplay

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After 18 months in recession , the eurozone finally posted some much needed growth

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Things are looking up but it depends where you are in Europe , and there 's little room for complacency

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The challenge for Europe 's leaders will be to seize upon the green shoots

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Now , the bloc 's business leaders need confidence , but that is an intangible currency